1. Mechanical Forces of Fission Yeast Growth
Nicolas Minc, Arezki Boudaoud, Fred Chang 
Current Biology 
Volume 19, Issue 13, Pages (July 2009)
DOI: /j.cub
Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd Terms and Conditions

2. Figure 1
Microfabricated Chambers as Single-Cell Force Sensors for Studying the Mechanical Properties of Fission Yeast Cells
(A) Parameters of a fission yeast cell. The cell-wall layer has an elastic modulus, Ecw, and a thickness h. The turgor pressure inside the cell is P. The rod-shaped cell has a radius R and a length L.
(B) Schematic showing how yeast cells are placed into the PDMS chambers.
(C) Top-view image of an array of chambers with cells inside. Scale bar represents 10 μm.
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3. Figure 2 Measuring Fission Yeast Cell-Wall Elastic Modulus
(A) Single fission yeast cells with similar cell lengths were pushed into chambers smaller than the cells. Chambers with decreasing elastic moduli Ech (from left to right) are shown. Scale bars represent 5 μm.
(B) Illustration of the method used to compute chamber deformation. (Left) The initial chamber diameter, D, is measured on the surrounding chambers (precision better than 5%), and the deformation, d, is measured along the force axis. (Right) The force from the chamber deformation equilibrates the buckling force. Because this buckling force is proportional to the cell-wall surface modulus, this method allows for a direct calculation of the cell-wall surface modulus at the single-cell level. Scale bar represents 5 μm.
(C) Plot of the chamber deformation as a function of the inverse of the scaled chamber elastic modulus (E∗, see Equation 4) obtained from 155 single cells. Different symbols correspond to different chamber elastic moduli, as shown in the legend. The fit used is parabolic to account for second-order saturations at larger deformation. The imprecision in the measurement is found to be higher than the scattering of the data around the proposed fit. The strain is NM11.
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4. Figure 3 Force-Velocity Relations for Fission Yeast Cell Growth
(A) Time-lapse sequence of a fission yeast cell growing in and deforming a chamber made of soft PDMS (elastic modulus, Ech = 0.16 Mpa). Scale bar represents 10 μm.
(B) Schematic illustrating the basis of the experiments. The free growth rate, v0, is measured before the cell is deforming the chamber. When the cell deforms the chamber, the force from the deformation opposes turgor and may reduce the growth rate, v(F). As the cell deforms the chamber more and more, the force increases (F2 > F1), which may continue changing the growth rate.
(C) Cell growth under an external force . (Left) Example of growth curve of a single cell growing in a stiff chamber (Ech = 0.65MPa). The dotted lines follow the free growth rate as measured before contact. The gray part highlights the phase of growth under external force. The left axis plots the cell elongation: ΔL = L(t)-L(t = 0). The right axis plots the external force of the deformed chamber. (Right) Force-velocity plot. Each point is averaged on typically 3–4 different experimental sets, and forces are binned so that a sample size is kept almost constant. The vertical error bars represent the standard deviations. The dotted line plots a linear fit that corresponds to Equation 5.
(D) Free growth rate measured in bipolar wild-type and gpd1Δ cells in the presence of increasing concentrations of sorbitol ( , 0.1, and 0.2 M). n = 10 cells for each condition.
(E) Force-velocity plot of gpd1Δ cells in the absence and in the presence of 0.05 M sorbitol. n = 15 cells in both conditions.
(F) Stalling forces extrapolated from force-velocity curves in the indicated mutants and conditions. The yeast strains are: NM11, NM183, and NM209 (all in a cdc25-22 background and grown at 25C). Double asterisks represent a Student's t test, p <
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5. Figure 4 Cell Buckling under Its Own Pushing Force
(A) Time-lapse sequence of a fission yeast cell growing and buckling under its own pushing force in a rigid chamber. Scale bar represents 10 μm.
(B) Example of a growth curve of a cell buckling in a 15 μm chamber. The delay, Δt, during which the cell length stalls is indicated. The angle between cell tips represented on the right axis in blue is used for detection of the onset of buckling.
(C) Buckling force, FB, plotted as a function of the delay, Δt, along with values predicted from the model. The yeast strains are NM11 and FC1234.
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